The post-Gaddafi leadership of Libya is drawing up ambitious plans to turn the country into the "beacon" of the Arab and Islamic worlds, but faces a lengthy and dangerous bout of infighting between rival factions and is in no rush to stage elections, according to senior European officials negotiating with the leadership in Tripoli.

Agostino Miozzo, an Italian doctor and veteran of humanitarian emergencies who is the EU's international crisis manager, emphasised that the leaders of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) were determined to resist international pressure and to decide the fate of their country themselves.

"Tripoli seems to be moving fast towards normality, but they [the NTC] need time to fight the internal political struggle," Agostino said, after spending more than a week in Tripoli establishing contact with the new rulers. "We have no idea of the southern part of the country. That will be most problematic in the coming months. This part is totally out of control."

European officials working on Libya and in regular touch with the new regime say they have been surprised by the resolve of the NTC to reject international pressure and to take their own decisions.

In his first speech in Tripoli, the NTC chairman and interim Libyan leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, called for unity and moderation. "We will not accept any extremist ideology, on the right or the left. We are a Muslim people, for a moderate Islam, and will stay on this road," he said on Monday night.

The revolutionary leaders have compiled a "black book" of Gaddafi cronies, relatives and loyalists who can expect retribution for their roles under the dictatorship, but they are anxious to avoid the Iraq "de-Ba'athification" disaster. The vast majority of the Libyan army officer class, including those still fighting the NTC in places such as Sirte, should be incorporated into a post-Gaddafi military.

Jalil has told Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, that "very few" army officers have been blacklisted. The NTC is using mobile phone messaging to urge bureaucrats in Tripoli to return to their desks.

"They are requesting all staff professionals and all officials to the level of under-secretary of state to go back to work," said Miozzo.

As well as ongoing challenges from Gaddafi loyalist forces in parts of the country, the new leadership is riven by frictions between Islamists and secularists, and tribal and regional tensions, making it difficult to discern who is really in charge.

The Europeans were spirited into Tripoli in the middle of the night by Italian special forces at the end of last month, sources in Brussels said, in a race to be first to the Libyan capital, ahead of the UN or leaders of the Nato bombing campaign such as the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, or David Cameron.

They spent their first few days trying to work out who they should be talking to, since the pecking order of the new regime was unclear and came down to the relative status of which Tripoli hotel different leaders were camping in. The capital's Corinthia hotel is the most coveted headquarters, ahead of the Radisson, sources said.

Despite the challenges and the confusion, some of the fast-emerging younger leaders are hatching bold plans for the future. Aref Ali Nayed, who has been put in charge of construction and of stabilising the country, unfurled a large map of the Maghreb and Middle East as part of an argument aimed at persuading the Europeans that the new Libya will be "the lighthouse of the region from Rabat to Peshawar".He is tipped by informed diplomats as a potential future prime minister.

The new leadership was trenchant about what it neither wants nor needs from Europe and the wider international community. They will not put up with a "circus" of western do-gooders, humanitarians, non-governmental organisations and government agencies running around the country drawing up schemes and projects, a common phenomenon in post-conflict zones.

"They are loud and clear. This is our country. We must decide," said Miozzo. "The mantra is "this is not Afghanistan and not Iraq". This is not a poor country and they're not going to bargain with us. We know what they don't want from us."

The new leadership's primary aims are to secure the Mediterranean Sea frontiers and the desert borders in the south. They are also keen to host an international conference on security and migration, issues that may come to dominate Libyan policy in the EU, particularly in Mediterranean countries such as Italy and France.

"The west is interested in a quick election," said Miozzo. "But the NTC doesn't want to go so fast. They have other priorities. They want to stabilise things first."

In the fallout from Gaddafi's collapse, EU diplomats following the situation predict that a big casualty will be the African Union grouping the continent's leaders. It continues to be dominated by "dictators and not only dictators" who were paid "immense" sums of money by Gaddafi and continue to support the international war crimes suspect.